While the practice of law and the context of higher education have changed radically over recent decades, curriculum renewal in legal education still struggles to keep pace. Common law legal educators face significant conceptual challenges in meeting the persistent demands for curriculum innovation and quality assurance. Further, at a time when higher education has renewed its focus on learning and teaching professionalism and the quality of the student experience, the current fraught reality for all – academics and students alike – is the need to be more effective and efficient in our daily practices and educational engagements.
This article provides a brief environmental scan of legal education internationally, and then moves to consider the challenges inherent in educating our graduates for the demands of 21st century citizenry and legal practice in globalised work environments. Some ideas are offered as to how we might go about curriculum design to support new learners in the discipline and to meet the imperatives of teaching, learning and assessing for the new learning objectives being embraced.